Press Releases

Project Valued at Over $1 Billion – Ericsson Chooses Québec for Its New Information and Communication Technology Centre

Investissement Québec is proud to have played a role in the decision by Swedish company Ericsson to locate its global ICT centre in Québec. Premier Pauline Marois had championed Québec as a location for the new facility with Ericsson’s President when the two met at the World Economic Forum in Davos with Investissement Québec President and CEO Jacques Daoust.

Montréal, June 3, 2013 – Pauline Marois, Premier of Québec, Nicolas Marceau, Minister of Finance and the Economy, and Élaine Zakaïb, Minister for Industrial Policy and the Banque de développement économique du Québec, announced today that Ericsson Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of multinational Ericsson, has been awarded $10 million in non-refundable financial assistance to build an information and communication technology (ICT) centre in Vaudreuil-Dorion, in the greater Montréal area.

The company will benefit from Hydro-Québec’s L rate, a preferential rate awarded to large-power customers, and may also qualify for the 10-year tax holiday announced in the Budget Speech for investment projects worth at least $300 million.

The project announced today will create 60 new jobs for engineers and consolidate 200 existing jobs in R&D. In addition, it will generate investments totalling more than $1 billion over the next three years. It should be noted that in January 2013, at a working meeting with Ericsson Group President and CEO Hans Vestberg at the Davos Summit, the Premier had championed Québec as a location for a new ICT facility.

“That decisive meeting provided an opportunity to showcase Québec’s strengths, and I’m delighted with the benefits the new ICT centre will have for Greater Montréal and Québec as a whole,” said Pauline Marois. “This project is an acknowledgement of our strengths and a sign of confidence in our economy. It definitely speaks to Québec’s ability to attract major investment projects. Boosting Québec’s economic development and profile are priorities for our government, and we’ll do everything in our power to raise the number of private and foreign investments.”

“The plentiful supply of hydroelectricity, a renewable form of energy, is certainly one of Québec’s main assets, and it makes the province an ideal location for the centre,” stated Nicolas Marceau. “That wealth of power, along with the expertise of our ICT workforce, is contributing to the rise of a competitive, Québec-based cloud-computing industry and helping foster sustainable development for our province.”

“Moving ahead with this project will encourage the development of cloud computing in Québec, an up-and-coming sector that promises to bring about big changes in numerous industries and could well become a major driver of Québec’s ICT industry,” commented Élaine Zakaïb.

Cloud computing is a computing concept whereby processing operations that are traditionally carried out on local servers or client workstations are performed on remote servers.